Posts Tagged fourth amendment

Red Flags and Due Process

From American Thinker:

Senator Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) promised that under his bill, to get a federal grant, the state red flag laws would have to provide “due process.”  Similarly, President Trump has sought to assure the public that any red flag legislation will provide for “rapid due process.”  When questioned, most congressional Republicans say they will support police seizing guns only if rigorous due process is provided.  Don’t buy it.  Red flag laws violate the Second Amendment, and “due process” is not a magic wand to be waved to make the infringement go away.

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Republicans Spreading Bad Idea On Background Checks

From Firearms Policy Coalition:

On September 18, 2019, a purported “idea” document reportedly being circulated among Republican senators and congressmen was leaked to the media. The document, entitled “Idea for New Unlicensed-Commercial-Sale Background Checks”, is both frighteningly vague and callous in its disregard for the Second and Fourth Amendments, as well as the federalist principles that animate the Commerce Clause.
The document suggests that “many commercial sales are conducted outside of FFLs without any background check or record-keeping requirements.” This is either incorrect or uses a definition of “commercial sale” beyond the scope of common understanding. Present law requires anyone “engaged in the business” of selling firearms to acquire a Federal Firearms License. Incidental, intrastate transactions between private individuals are regulated by the states.

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Pennsylvania Strengthens 2nd/4th Amendments

From National Review:

Unless a police officer has prior knowledge that a specific individual is not permitted to carry a concealed firearm, and absent articulable facts supporting reasonable suspicion that a firearm is being used or intended to be used in a criminal manner, there simply is no justification for the conclusion that the mere possession of a firearm, where it lawfully may be carried, is alone suggestive of criminal activity.

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Red Flag Fallout In Colorado

From Reason:

Commonly referred to as a “red flag law,” this type of legislation is part of a state-by-state strategy pushed by gun control activists who were galvanized by the 2018 shooting at Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida. Prior to the Parkland shooting, five states had some sort of red flag law on the books; not including H.B. 1177, there are now 14.

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CO To Recall More Politicians Over Red Flag Law

From The Truth About Guns:

Now Colorado has enacted one of the most sweeping “red flag” laws in the country (that allows virtually anyone — not just relatives and those close to a target — to initiate a confiscation order against anyone who poses a “significant risk”).
In response, a recall effort has been initiated against Rep. Tom Sullivan of Aurora who sponsored the bill.

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L.A. Times: Mandate Gun Storage

From The L.A. Times:

A study published this week in JAMA Pediatrics reinforces a sobering reality: that far too many minors are gaining access to firearms and either committing suicide or accidentally killing themselves — or others. Last year more than 4,500 children age 17 or younger were killed or wounded with guns. While suicide statistics for 2018 aren’t available, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has reported a sharp rise in recent youth suicides, about half of which historically have involved a gun.

How is this gun storage law going to be enforced unless the police can do random searches of your home to make sure you are following the law?

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Supreme Court Continues To Ignore Second Amendment Cases

From Reason:

Ten years ago this week, the Supreme Court for the first time explicitly recognized that the Second Amendment protects an individual right to armed self-defense. Since then the Court has revisited the subject only twice, while it has heard about 45 cases involving the Fourth Amendment and about 60 involving the First.

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Data Should Be Covered By Fourth Amendment Says Silicon Valley

From Ars Technica:

A group of prominent tech companies and lawyers has come together in new friend-of-the-court filings submitted to the Supreme Court on Tuesday. The group is arguing in favor of stronger legal protections for data generated by apps and digital devices in an important privacy case pending before the court.

The companies, which include Apple, Google, and Microsoft among many others, argue that the current state of the law, which distinguishes between “content” (which requires a warrant) and “non-content” (which does not) “make[s] little sense in the context of digital technologies.”

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Court Rules Gun Owners Are Dangerous and Forfeit Other Rights

From National Review:

So, if concealed-carry permit holders are presumptively dangerous, does this mean that they forfeit other constitutional rights? Wynn explained (approvingly) that under the majority’s reasoning they certainly do:

I see no basis — nor does the majority opinion provide any — for limiting our conclusion that individuals who choose to carry firearms are categorically dangerous to the Terry frisk inquiry. Accordingly, the majority decision today necessarily leads to the conclusion that individuals who elect to carry firearms forego other constitutional rights, like the Fourth Amendment right to have law enforcement officers “knock-and-announce” before forcibly entering homes. . . . Likewise, it is difficult to escape the conclusion that individuals who choose to carry firearms necessarily face greater restriction on their concurrent exercise of other constitutional rights, like those protected by the First Amendment.

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Feds Collecting License Plate Information From Gun Shows

From the NRA:

The article states that ICE had hatched a plan to use license plate readers (LPRs) at Southern California gun shows to compare information on vehicles parked at the shows with information on vehicles later crossing the border into Mexico.

Of course, there’s nothing inherently suspicious about attending a gun show or traveling to a neighboring country, even if one event precedes another. 

“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.”

“The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.”

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Cops Recorded Making Up Charges Against Protestor

From Guns.com:

On Sept. 11, 2015, Michael Picard, known locally as an open carry advocate, was protesting at a Connecticut State Police checkpoint in West Hartford, which he feels are contrary to the Fourth Amendment, and a waste of public money. Standing several hundred feet from the checkpoint, Picard held a three-foot by two-foot yellow sign reading, “Cops Ahead: Keep Calm and Remain Silent.”

At the event, he had his camera, phone, legally carried pistol and pistol permit confiscated by troopers. He was subsequently cited by the troopers with use of a highway by a pedestrian and creating a public disturbance, then released.

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Homeland Security Stops Reporter, Asks To Search Phone

From Motherboard:

On Thursday, a Wall Street Journal (WSJ) reporter claimed that the Department of Homeland Security demanded access to her mobile phones when she was crossing the border at the Los Angeles airport.

“I wanted to share a troubling experience I had with the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), in the hopes it may help you protect your private information,” Maria Abi-Habib, a WSJ journalist focused on ISIS and Al Qaeda wrote in a post on Facebook. (Abi-Habib confirmed to Motherboard that the Facebook account was hers, but declined to comment further.)

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Supreme Court Chips Away At Fourth Amendment

From Rare.us:

On Monday, SCOTUS continued this assault on the Fourth Amendment. It concluded that even when the government admits a stop was illegal, it can still use that evidence to prosecute you.

Under Heien, the cops only had to prove reasonable ignorance of the law: “I didn’t realize stopping this person was illegal, but I found this evidence, so we should use it.”

Now, under Monday’s Utah v. Strieff, even that charade is no longer necessary. Police can simply say: “Yeah, that stop was illegal, but I found this evidence, so we should use it.”

This is all the more reason for citizens to familiarize themselves with jury nullification. You can learn more about it from the Fully Informed Jury Association (FIJA).

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The Apple Case Could Violate The Thirteenth Amendment

If Apple is compelled to create a program that doesn’t exist for the government, that would be a type of slavery.

From Reason.com:

Instead, the DOJ has obtained the most unique search warrant I have ever seen in 40 years of examining them. Here, the DOJ has persuaded a judge to issue a search warrant for A THING THAT DOES NOT EXIST, by forcing Apple to create a key that the FBI is incapable of creating.

There is no authority for the government to compel a nonparty to its case to do its work, against the nonparty’s will, and against profound constitutional values. Essentially, the DOJ wants Apple to hack into its own computer product, thereby telling anyone who can access the key how to do the same.

If the courts conscripted Apple to work for the government and thereby destroy or diminish its own product, the decision would constitute a form of slavery, which is prohibited by our values and by the Thirteenth Amendment.

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Apple, Privacy and the FBI

It’s way more complicated than the pundits are saying. To be fully informed read these articles.

From the EFF:

…the FBI’s demands reflect a familiar pattern of security agencies leveraging the most seemingly compelling situations—usually the aftermath of terror attacks—to create powers that are later used more widely and eventually abused. The government programs monitoring the telephone system and Internet, for example, were created in the wake of the 9/11 attacks. Those programs came to undermine the rights of billions of people, doing more damage to our security than the tragic events that prompted their creation.

ArsTechnica discusses Fifth Amendment issues:

But the Fifth Amendment goes beyond the well-known right against compelled self-incrimination. The relevant part for the Apple analysis is: “nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation.”

The idea here is that the government is conscripting Apple to build something that it doesn’t want to do. That allegedly is a breach of its “substantive due process.” The government is “conscripting a company’s employees to become agents for the government,” as one source familiar with Apple’s legal strategy told Ars. The doctrine of substantive due process, according to Cornell University School of Law, holds “that the 5th and 14th Amendments require all governmental intrusions into fundamental rights and liberties be fair and reasonable and in furtherance of a legitimate governmental interest.”

Reason discusses the political battle over encryption:

This incident is only the latest conflict in a years-long encryption and security war waging between privacy- and security-minded groups and the law enforcement community. As more communications are digitized, authorities have been calling for industry assistance to build so-called government “backdoors” into secure technologies by hook or by crook.

Those in law enforcement fear a scenario where critical evidence in a terrorism or criminal case is beyond the reach of law enforcement because it is protected by strong encryption techniques that conceal data from anyone but the intended recipient. Hence, leaders at agencies like the Department of Justice, the Department of Homeland Security, and the National Security Agency, along with President Obama, have weighed in against strong encryption.

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